O.C. - Born 2 Live

I should have remembered that 90's hip-hop will always sound good to me: it's like freewheeling down memory lane. (Oasis also have a house thereabouts, as do the Spice Girls. Nostalgia is not a matter of taste.)

This is a meditative track from the Brooklyn underground (and yes, it sounds like Nas circa Illmatic. How could that be a bad thing?).

I like to think that Talib and Jay grew up listening to O.C.



The delicious sample is off this lush little funky number by Keni Burke, called Rising to the Top. Love it.



Broke (of whom I am a massive fan), did a tidy little remix of this on his downloadable mixtape The Murder Tape - it's called "I was 3 in 1994". I was eight personally, but I like to think that means that Mr Broke would have looked up to me. At least height-wise.

Broke - Coulda Said Goodbye (Not So Young)

Wow. This is the kind of instrumental that makes me excited about instrumentals.

It's got a sound like dusty velvet: the depth of the timbre on this is amazing, and it's gentle and careful and beautiful. That vintage feel is amped up by the inclusion of what I think is Madlib's movie-star-style vocal tag.

You're not going to warm to it right away. But when it finishes, you'll play it a couple of times over, and each time when it finishes, you'll miss it. Clever tricks from Mr Broke.

Coulda Said Goodbye (Not So Young) by Broke/

Broke - Run That Shit

Oh sugar... It's a refit of Gang Starr's seminal track Just To Get A Rep. And refitting a track that classic is about equivalent to trying to give the Mona Lisa a new smile. Risky business.

But Broke nails it: this definitely wins instrumental-of-the-week - I like pianos in hip-hop. But there's no need to get analytical on this: it's just one and a half minutes of gorgeousness. And it's downloadable. Oh yes.

In terms of heritage, the final lines are originally from Funky For You, which was then quoted by Gang Starr.

Run That Shit by Broke/